How to Find the Right Bathing Suit After a Mastectomy

Stacey knew she wanted to get reconstructive surgery done after her mastectomy, but she wasn’t ready to get it right away. So she got a breast prosthesis instead.

That meant, however, trying to find cute and well-fitting tops, lingerie, undergarments, swimwear, and more that would work with her new prosthesis and look good too. And that was a bit more easily said than done.

Stacey, like many others, struggled with the fact that much of the garments that are made to work with prosthetic breasts are geared toward older women, since they are the ones most likely to develop breast cancer. But Stacey was still a young and fashionable woman, and she didn’t want to give up on style just because she’d survived breast cancer.

Photo: YouTube/Rethink Breast Cancer

Luckily, she learned somewhere along the way that some of the items she would ordinarily have worn that didn’t work well with her prosthesis were easily adjustable with a little bit of sewing.

Photo: YouTube/Rethink Breast Cancer

“As long as it has the right support and the right kind of straps,” she says, “you can pretty much sew a pocket into any existing bathing suit you might have or any new one you find.”

Photo: YouTube/Rethink Breast Cancer

In the video below, Stacey will share a couple of her bathing suits and why they work well for her. She’ll explain how to choose a good bathing suit that you can easily put a prosthetic pocket in yourself and how to go about doing that.

Don’t give up the opportunity to find out how you can make stylish swimwear work for you. Check out the video!

Elizabeth Nelson is a wordsmith, an alumna of Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, a four-leaf-clover finder, and a grammar connoisseur. She has lived in west Michigan since age four but loves to travel to new (and old) places. In her free time, she. . . wait, what’s free time?